Hindi writing, as well as Hindi journalism, is a great gift to Indian writing. — Amitava Kumar Gift Copy Share Image
What is the difference between the novelist and the liar? At some moments, I have often wondered. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
A character takes shape in the act of writing. You start with something, and you add or subtract. — Amitava Kumar Character Copy Share Image
For years, in the wake of Rushdie, I had imagined magical realism to be the last refuge of the non-resident Indian. — Amitava Kumar Indian Copy Share Image
I'm not ashamed to confess that I often note down many of the crazy things my children say. — Amitava Kumar Children Copy Share Image
While I ridicule books of self-help, I'm also quite susceptible to them. They help simplify things. — Amitava Kumar Books Copy Share Image
It's so easy for folks to normalize their opinions, to engage in a groupthink that is damaging. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
My past makes me an insider, but my profession makes me an outsider. A writer always stands outside to report on reality. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
You ask a politician a question, like, why they ran in an election, and you'll hear, I assume, something about wanting to… — Amitava Kumar Community Copy Share Image
In fiction, you don't invent the events. What is imaginative about it is the consciousness: how you think about the events and… — Amitava Kumar Consciousness Copy Share Image
I didn't know V. S. Naipaul very well, and to a large extent, my acquaintance with him was limited to meetings at… — Amitava Kumar Festivals Copy Share Image
If the 20th century was marked by travel - planes in flight - then the events of 9/11 ushered in the age… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
One of my earliest lessons in guilt was imparted in childhood through the story of the death of Mahatma Gandhi's father. — Amitava Kumar Childhood Copy Share Image
For some members of the radical Left, particularly in the West, people in developing countries are an ideological abstraction, on whom fantasies… — Amitava Kumar Developing countries Copy Share Image
With non-fiction, there is the struggle to be accurate. With fiction, it is a bit different: the desire to let imagination take… — Amitava Kumar Desire Copy Share Image
Neither the writer nor the reader can save the world by themselves. Or escape it entirely. — Amitava Kumar Books Copy Share Image
The border is a marketplace. The invisible hand of the powerful governs the crossings. — Amitava Kumar Border Copy Share Image
I was seen as a traitor for marrying a Muslim - a Pakistani at that. — Amitava Kumar Islam Copy Share Image
To write what is not dead on the page, one has to be open to all kinds of disturbances and challenges and… — Amitava Kumar Challenges Copy Share Image
I'm generalizing wildly, but academic books find safety in explanations that reduce the chaos of social life. — Amitava Kumar Books Copy Share Image
Our public culture is one in which only the young and the beautiful will succeed. If you're forty, you're finished. — Amitava Kumar Beautiful Copy Share Image
Much of what we regard as truth in the war on terror is actually rather suspect. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
Bad writing as a conscious goal is liberating for students: They are freed to be creative in a new and different way. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
To my mind, a journalist needs to espouse objectivity and distance, while a writer practises an art that is more free. — Amitava Kumar Art Copy Share Image
I think criticism is often so pallid, so tame. I wish it were more performative. — Amitava Kumar Criticism Copy Share Image
No civilization has a monopoly on tolerance; each is capable of bigotry. — Amitava Kumar Bigotry Copy Share Image
Ideally, I'd like to write poetry for public performances and prose for a different, more contemplative kind of consumption. — Amitava Kumar Consumption Copy Share Image
For me to say that all novels in English written by Indians are all alike would be a bit like saying that… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
Such is the impurity of our enterprise, as writers or as critics, that even in the act of proclaiming our freedom from… — Amitava Kumar Authenticity Copy Share Image
In 1997, Alain de Botton published his book 'How Proust Can Change Your Life.' I was charmed by it. I remember using… — Amitava Kumar Books Copy Share Image
I've immersed myself in reading more and more of American literature, but no editor has asked me to comment on Jonathan Franzen… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
My own personal conviction is that if I were writing without thinking about how images or how journalism is creating a world… — Amitava Kumar Faith Copy Share Image
The radio stations will happily recycle a badly worded statement by a politician all day but will steer clear of broadcasting more… — Amitava Kumar Day Copy Share Image
I like to write about real people, real crimes. But what has increasingly come to interest me, and also appear to me… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
I grew up in India during the 1960s and '70s in a meat-eating Hindu family. Only my mother and my grandparents were… — Amitava Kumar Family Copy Share Image
Muslim anger has, of course, been stoked by America's war in Iraq and by Israel's brutal policies toward Palestine and Lebanon. — Amitava Kumar America Copy Share Image
I have to tell you, when I hear the song 'Jiya ho Bihar ke Lala,' I want to throw the history books… — Amitava Kumar Bollywood Copy Share Image
When I close my eyes and think of a writer, I don't imagine him or her as someone who is sitting above… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
